Bomb test in new mexico on july 16th, 1945. Documents key events leading up to the august 6th, 1945 bombing of hiroshima, japan. The author then describes in detail. Thanks very much. You all hear me i hope. Thank you so much for coming actually the most wonderful evening in this glorious city, which my daughter, over there, has completely fallen in love with. Her first visit here. It is such a lovely evening, it is great that you all come here to listen to Horror Stories about the atomic bomb. I havent really made any notes by this because i really wanted to talk to you about the heart on what this book is and what it means to me and the journey that i have taken over the last really two and a half years since i started the documentary. I was asked to make this documentary back in april 2003 by a friend of mine who has a company in london called line television. I did Everything Possible to resist the offered to make this film. Not because the money was appalling, which it was, but actually because this is a really terrifying difficult and complex and frightening and challenging subject to have to tackle. You are dealing with one of the subtle events in world history, obviously. People knew all the cliches. I used myself about the world changing forever. Nothing ever being the same again and yet actually what happened in my case was the thought buzzed around in my brain and it wouldnt go away and it did not go away and finally, almost reluctantly, i accepted this offer and started to make a film. The film i made really was exactly as was described. It was a 24 hour story. It was a story that starts at 8 15 on the morning of august the 5th, 1945 and ends 24 hours later. 1903 feet above a clinic in the middle of her hiroshima on august a sixth. It took me to several different places and people and became, in a way, almost an obsession, a very dangerous thing for filmmaker but in this instance, i decided after that that this subject was something i could not leave and would write a book about. This is a product of that book now. I will say this, i remember someone in my research, a year ago, i started a journey which took me around the world. It was a journey and very privileged to take courtesy of my publishers. I went to eastern seaboard of the United States. I was in the city, i was in new york, and went across new mexico, spent a lot of time in new mexico and then to San Francisco and then actually, eventually across japan. Finally down to a little tiny island in the western pacific. A little dot in the middle of nowhere, which is where the first atomic missions actually flew. Four in that island a high had a very extraordinary experience. I want to share that with you because in some ways it encapsulates the feelings im trying to put across in this book. It is a very small island and its about the size of manhattan. So much so in fact, it looks a bit like manhattan so much so that the construction battalion to actually built the huge air bases from which those missions and others were flown in 1945 actually made the streets so there was a broadway, 86 three, theres a 112th street. You go down 42nd street, its in the middle of the jungle. Make a left on broadway, keep going on broadway, somewhere near the 105th street you find yourself on a runway where the enola gay took off for its mission to hiroshima. Its the only way you can get to the island is from japan, which is interesting. In the sense what you do is you take off from japan and you fly the 1500 miles to tinian. In fact you land very nearby onside pan. You are flying back over the same featureless c and you pass over a volcanic rock of will jima. You are flying at approximately the same height of those guys would have phone about 4000 feet. It is quite a strange and i mentioned these two or three of them that this was actually the side of the atomic missions that they were going back to. They were shocked because what is actually there today is a casino hotel. It is a place where people go to gamble. This is on an island right about greenwich village, if you think of it that way. In one case, one of the japanese tourists or gamblers that was with me actually wanted to get their money back because it was so distraught at the idea. This is actions that have been lost in history, was actually the site of the first atomic mission. Indeed both missions. I drove up in a sort of jeep northwards to find these runways, which is still there riding in the jungle. This was the biggest base in the world in 1945. It was absolutely massive. Forge huge parallel runways. It was a size of kennedy airport. It was absolutely enormous and also the busiest runway. It is completely empty. Nothing there at all, just jungle and these coral runways. One of which you can just about drive on. The other three are really kind of have succumbed to that incredibly fertile jungle. I then took a walk away from these runways down a little pathway that actually traverse, quite a thick jungle actually, and wound its way towards the coast, about a quarter mile. It is actually frighten with snakes. Im terrified of snakes. God knows what the runway went towards this coast through a little path. I found myself, where hoped i find myself, which is on the site of the actual Assembly Buildings where the bombs, which destroyed hurry shimmer and nagasaki both built to finally assemble. I am standing on the foundations of this building, which i have read about and spoke to so many scientists about. This was, for a few short weeks in the summer of 1945, possibly one of the most secret places on earth. If i had been there 60 years previously, i would have been shot on sight for being in this place, but there was nobody there now. It was just me, birds, the wrestled leaves, on the sound of the sea and nothing else, just me. It was a very strange feeling to be in this place where everybody had gone home 70 years ago for what was actually one of the most Extraordinary Events in history. At that point i realize that i traveled on the footsteps. I had been there where it was developed. I had been at the site where the first atomic bomb was tested in the desert, which i will talk about in a moment. I followed the bomb and the pilots who actually trained to deliver this bomb in this really windy, dusty air based on hundred 20 miles west of salt lake city. A place so remote at the time that all the guys that flew from their headed a. It was actually an extraordinary air base right down the middle in the state line hotel lobby so you can basically sober on one side and get drunk on the other side of the lobby. They all told me about that and then of course i also want to San Francisco and underneath the golden gate bridge, in july, 1945, the uss indianapolis, i ship so many of you are familiar with, sailed with its cargo cargo of uranium in a 300 pound lead line bucket while did on its way to tinian island. From there was taken and delivered and dropped on hiroshima. In a way, went to all these places. I followed in ones footsteps. It gave me a sense of the focus of what my book was about. I was going to take the seminal events and the most important three weeks in history of this project and perhaps one of the most important three weeks in history generally. I was going to try and follow individual stories from policy makers of president s and secretaries of wars and very key figures in the japanese at the time down to people. Scientists, lawmakers, people who i have met interviewing spoken to and obviously the aviators who trained in that windy, dusty, salt lake airfield for so many months before they were shipped out to do their job wish they did so remarkably and terrifyingly well. That became the core of my book. My book moves between all these different people as the clock ticks down towards that final second on august 6th 1945 which we, in some sense, commemorated, that is even the right word this saturday. Now what i would like to do if you do not mind is for it will give you a little flavor of what this is all about and the tone in which it is actually written. Before i do so, i should just stress, it is very important to understand that although i have conceived and written this book in a way that i hope will be engaging to people who might not otherwise touched the subject have been so many books written in so many monographs written about hiroshima that many people do not read about it. Because it is daunting, heavily footnoted, perhaps academic, whatever, but everything that i have written is as far as i can verify it true. I have use my own historian training to to be able to test myself and challenge myself constantly with primary sources, with many, many interviews i have done around the world. The stories that i am telling our real stories. These are not fake stories. In fact, this is one of those extraordinary situations where as they say, you know, the truth is much more extraordinary than fiction, much more, much more in this instance extraordinary and fiction. Let me start a good place to start, which is the test of the first atomic bomb in the new mexico desert. We are on july the 16th, 1945 or the 15 to the 16th, 1945, the worlds first atomic bomb looks like a giant four tons fear. It has wire spreading that out of it and it sits on top of 103 foot tower in the middle of the desert in new mexico. There is a massive electrical storm taking place, one of new mexicos worst ever electrical storms taking place. Here is this bomb sitting in the little shack on top of this tower in the middle of the desert and everyone is panicking about the weather because there are all sorts of concerns of what the weather might due to the bomb. There is also some serious concern that this bomb once dented aided might possibly set fire to the atmosphere. And destroy the planet completely. Nobody knows whats going to happen when in atomic bomb goes off. There are bits taking place, in base camp which is not very far away from this tower. Safe distance away three or four miles away. So when scientists are taking bets, on whether this bomb might destroy the or satin sphere, by setting fire on it, this is a serious mathematical probability. Or this could actually happen. It actually was worked out as a mathematical probability. In the middle of all this, doug oppenheim, and the general, general groves, this being a hard task. Who ran from the Manhattan Project. This guy, and these two guys together, who formed an extraordinary marriage or partnership, decided they decided somehow, the make it up there in sabotage this bomb. So they decided to send a man, who was a physicist who go and who to go and babysit the bomb. And he just basically assent to go and babysit the bomb. So i will just read you, and this is chapter one of the book. Just you know its all about. The story is told me by donald hornet himself. When i sat in his living room, and this is how he told it to me. Sunday july the 15th, 90 pm. Trinity test site, south of sorrow new mexico. Don horn egg, stood up the tower. The wind and rain as well as the storm that had been built up during the day had built up like fury. Flash of lightning, and the desert echoed the growl of thunder. The tower, loomed 103 feet above his head. A network of black braces and girders, like a giant electric island. By now the clouds were racing solo against this guy, he could barely see the top. Which was just as well really. He did not want to think, about what was at the top. He began to climb, and the wet steele slip to his feel his fingers, and the rain stunned his eyes. Making it difficult to see. He wore his safety harness. Run by wrong he pulled himself up the latter. Once or twice he stopped, and you can see the guards below him, looking up like ants on the desert floor. They seemed a long way down. At the top of the tower, a simple core gated to check, rested on a square wooden platform. It was a flimsy cheaply made structure. Not designed to last. It wasnt much bigger than a garden shed. Or nic stepped off the latter beside it took a shapeless crouched inside. There was a 61 60 watt bulb hanging from the roof. There was a metallic gray tinted for ton steel drum. It took up almost every inch of space in the shack. Even by day it wouldve looked ominous. It wouldve looked especially so now with the wind whipping, and the dim bulbs swaying from the ceiling. And the thunder and lightning coming near. Cable sprouted from its side, like got sore arteries. Like it was organic. A growing living autonomous embryo, awaiting the moment of its birth. Perhaps an acknowledgment to its essence, and to its creators had even given it a name. A number of names in fact. They called it the beast. The gadget, the thing, the device, and sometimes they just called it it. The one thing, nobody ever called it was what actually was, the worlds first atomic bomb. Hornig squeeze down beside it. The wind ruffled the cage. In just a few hours, scientists standing in a concrete bunker, south of the tower, would initiate the funnel act, and what was the biggest, and most expensive scientific expense experiment in history. He would press a switch on the panel, and begin a 45 second countdown. At the end of that time, a number of Different Things could happen. The bomb could fail to go off. Or it could detonate, with varying links of explosion. Or it could set fire to the earths atmosphere, in the process destroying a life on the planet. The difficulty, was that nobody knew. So that gives you a little flavor, of the kind of tensions that were building. And i decided to go straight in, i make no apologies for this at all, to go straight into that story, and start with that moment which begins three weeks before the book ends in hiroshima. What is also very important in the story, obviously very important indeed, is the japanese side of it. And when i went to hiroshima, i met a lot of different people in hiroshima, people who were still virus from the bomb. They had many many stories. Some which i narrow down and used in this book. Almost exactly as they were told to me. Through an interpreter ahead with me. And there was one story, that really struck me, and i never forgot. And kept turning around around in my mind and ill tell you what the story was and how i used it. I met a man he must of been in his mid eighties and i met him in his living room in hiroshima and he was somebody who had a very bad le burns face. We are talking about various Different Things we are talking about what hiroshima was like before the war and what it was like in months leading up to what it was like when the bomb was dropped. He told me about the good things in the bad things. He told me about the movies that people went to, you know hit movie in 1945, was a movie called for weddings, and if you look at the newspaper of that time, which i have even the newspaper that was printed on august six 1945, this is before the bomb fell, you can see there are sections for the cinema, called for weddings. There was ads for it. He told me about the grass the people late, he told me about the rumors, the city had not been bombed, it had not been touched, almost compared to every other major japanese city. Many of them had been virtually a brought to the ground. But hiroshima had not, it had not because it was being reserved if i could say that, the air forces word, for an atomic attack. Look but hiroshima began to wonder what was going, on there was a rumor going around, and a number people told me about, which was that actually president trumans mother, was a prisoner in the city, shoes being kept captive, and thats why the city had not been destroyed. In other words it was under personal orders of the president of the United States of america not to vomit, because his mother was in it. And his mother was in missouri, many thousand miles away. And the president s personal orders were, if you like the exact opposite. He told me all these things and we start to talk about the day itself. Then i asked him, a simple enough question i said to remember the night before the bomb . And there was a pause and then he burst into tears. Which was terribly embarrassing for me. I dont want to upset him, and i said it doesnt matter. He said no no no i want to tell you something, i want to tell you something that i have never told anybody before. And i want to tell it to you. He said the night before the ball most dropped, was the happiest night of my life. And then he started to tell the story. And the story that he told, was a love story. About a woman, but he had fallen in love with, he admitted that summer, and he is about 19 years old. She was 19 actually he was 2021. She was on the bridge when they met. And theyd fallen in love, and they spent most time together, and what made it poignant is that, the respective families were not happy with this relationship at all. They disapproved of it. Sort of a romeo and juliet thing. And they insisted, because they and loved each other. Then came the time, when he knew he had to tell or, that he had received his papers to the army. Both of his brothers have been killed in the army, and he knew he was facing death. There was no question about it. The americans were soon going to invade. And he would be. Did he would be a statistic. So that night, he and the squirrel, went to a beautiful garden, its a garden still there to today. It was restored after the bomb. A beautiful japanese garden, and they went into the garden, at night the two of them together. They lay on the grass, under the stars, his words not mine, and they lay for the longest time together. And then for the very first time, they held hands and they didnt kiss, they just held hands. And they like that for a long time. Around midnight, departed at the gate, and he went one way and she went the other way. And the next day, the almost dropped. And he searched for his lover, in the ruins of the city. About the time, that they parted at that garden gate, the crew of the noaa gay, would have been just sitting down to breakfast, of pineapple fritters, thats what they had for breakfast before being shipped out to enola gay to head out to it and bomb the city. So what i decide to do in this book, was a way to start and finish the book with that low story, for Different Reasons but also because it moved me deeply, and interesting way to start a book on hiroshima, is to start with these two people in that garden on that night, and that somebody or some people might be able to identify with. So if i can just read you, what i call a preference to the book. This is not chapter one, which i just read parts of. This is the preface before it. Sunday august the 5th 1945 for the rest of his life he would never forget how beautiful the garden look that night. The trees, the lake, the little rainbow bridge, the agent would empty houses dotting the banks, the smell of fresh pine, the white hair and sleeping on the iraq, the perfect stillness of it all. Outside, beyond the garden walls, the city slept in the darkness. In the blackout, it was almost possible to believe there was no city of there at all. No houses, no army, no war. As if he and rachel lying together under the stars were